Sermon: Three Words

First Presbyterian Church

February 25, 2024, Lent 2C

Mark 8:27-38

 

Three Words

 

 

The Revised Common Lectionary offers as its Gospel reading for today only the last eight verses of what we just read, leaving out Peter's great success at naming Jesus as the Messiah, the Anointed One. It was my choice (along with many other preachers) to reinstate the four verses at the beginning, partly because they are critical for understanding and interpreting the eight verses that follow, and frankly also because as badly as Peter comes off in those eight verses, it only seems fair to allow him his moment of glory, so to speak, especially since those are few and far between for him in this gospel.

It also helps this sermon to fulfill one of the long-held traditions of Protestant preaching: being presentable in three parts, good Trinitarian reference that suggests. In this case, one can fulfill that three-part quality by taking note of three specific words, spread roughly evenly throughout the text, that are key to understanding just what is going on in this reading. Furthermore, these three words frequently fall prey to misunderstanding, as their meanings have changed significantly since Mark first wrote them into his account of the life of Jesus. 

The first word is the one that Peter came up with: "messiah". 

If you ask a modern Christian what that word means, the answer might be something like "well, Jesus, of course." One could even argue that Peter's declaration marked the beginning of naming Jesus specifically with that description. Where things get challenging here is in sorting out exactly what Peter meant by calling Jesus "messiah." 

It's worth noting, though, that Jesus does not apply that term to himself, at least not in Mark's gospel until his very last night before the crucifixion. In most cases Jesus refers to himself as "Son of Man," as in both verses 31 and 38 of this reading. Interestingly, that reference - "Son of Man" - places an emphasis, as you might guess, on the mortality, and therefore the humanity of Jesus, which is a different emphasis indeed than is found in the word "messiah." 

Additionally, another part of the challenge is that the expectation of a messiah, an anointed one sent by God, wasn't necessarily a long-standing tradition in Judaism; in fact, one doesn't find the world itself in the Old Testament in most translations. As a result, the word got appropriated in some interesting ways and had some interesting meanings attached to it. By the time Peter was speaking that word, it had (in the minds of many though not all) taken on a meaning specific to this time: a political and/or military leader who would deliver the land from its hated Roman Empire occupiers. (As you might guess, this wouldn't be the last time the term "Messiah" got associated with such a figure.)

We can't be certain what was on Peter's mind when he made his claim about Jesus; we don't know if he was expecting Jesus to be a "military messiah" or not. We can be certain, though, he wasn't expecting Jesus to respond with the second of three words of emphasis here: "Satan." 

For those of a certain generation, that word is now mostly associated with a recurring sketch on Saturday Night Live some decades ago, in which Dana Carvey, dressed as a matronly woman known most simply as the Church Lady, got to exclaim that name at least once, when wondering if his guest had succumbed to temptation at the hands of said character. Even today, one is at least as likely if not more so to hear that figure named the Devil. While the name shows up plenty in the New Testament, again, it's not so prominent in Hebrew scripture. Perhaps its most prominent appearance is in the book of Job, where (in its original Hebrew form ha'satan) the word designates the one who comes before God to argue for the testing of Job. 

Note that Hebrew designation; ha'satan would be more literally tranlated as "the accuser" or "the adversary"; before it was a name, it was a description, and perhaps to grasp the full significance of Jesus's charge against Peter, we need to focus less on the character we associate with he word and pay more attention to what that word meant to those who spoke and heard it. In short, Jesus is accusing Peter - this fellow who had been numbered among his disciples since the beginning - of being an adversary. Jesus is calling Peter an enemy. 

The thing is, he's right.

Again let us remember that mission statement verse from back in chapter 1: "The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news." That's why Jesus was here on this earth. That was the whole point. Anyone who would oppose that is the adversary. No matter how much they have the right answers to the questions, no matter how close they've been or how long they've been with Jesus or any other thing that might be true about them, to oppose Jesus's word and work was to put oneself in opposition to Jesus. No other way about it. Jesus had already faced The Adversary back in the wilderness, and he had dealt with plenty of demons by this time. None of them had stood in the way of Jesus's work, and Peter wasn't going to either.

That brings us to one more word that we might need to reconsider in this context: "cross," as in Jesus's command in verse 34: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." I don't think anyone tries to deny the truth of this verse, at least not overtly, but there are some voices that try to numb us to its power. 

I'd guess that at some point we've all probably used a phrase like "well, that's my cross to bear" in reference to some obstacle or impediment we might face in our daily lives. Right now, I could speak of this ongoing bout of vertigo or something like it as "my cross to bear," as I might have spoken of any number of other health issues over the last decade-plus. One does not want to minimize the challenges we face on a daily basis, but one does not want to confuse them with the "cross" Jesus bore in his ministry on earth. There was the physical cross, and then there was the cross that brought him to bear the physical cross. 

That cross was the cross of living as if the Beatitudes were really to reflect how we see others; living our ives to treat "the least of these" as he describes in Matthew 25 as we would treat Jesus; giving our ministry and our mission and our time to meet the needs of those who live invisibly among us, not getting by, not being valued or loved, being invisible and easily stepped over or stepped upon without our being troubled one bit.

See, if we do that, "the Empire" won't like it. Whether it be the Roman Empire or the British Empire or whatever corporate empire one might choose to speak of, the only one we're supposed to serve in their view is that empire, and caring for poor or the meek or the hungry or the sorrowful interferes with that empire doing what it wants to do with us. And that empire, whichever one rules in our world, won't stand for it.

So if we truly take up that cross, denying ourselves, and follow Jesus in spirit and in truth, there will be suffering. And if Peter couldn't follow, Jesus wasn't going to let him stand in the way.

Peter wasn't through bungling things in front of Jesus. The transfiguration story (which we heard two weeks ago but actually comes in the chapter after this one) shows that Peter hadn't gotten it yet, and the events of Holy Week suggest that even then, Peter was trying to avoid Jesus meeting that fate. By the time of the book of Acts, though, something has finally gotten through to Peter; after all of his bungling and clumsiness of word and deed, he emerges as the vocal and spiritual leader of the early church in Jerusalem after Jesus's resurrection and ascension. 

I suppose, after considering these three words, we might want to ponder three questions:

1) do we really know what it means to call Jesus "Messiah"?

2) are we ever guilty of making ourselves an adversary to Jesus?

3) do we really know what means to take up our cross and follow Jesus?

For the challenge, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #439, O My Soul, Bless Your Redeemer; #---When Jesus told his followers; #718, Take Up Your Cross, the Savior Said

Sermon: Waters and Wilderness (and Wild Beasts)

First Presbyterian Church

February 18, 2024, Lent 1B

Mark 1:9-15

 

Waters and Wilderness (and Wild Beasts)

 

 

For some, this reading for the first Sunday of Lent, from Mark's gospel, is a disappointment. "Where are the actual temptations?" they might ask. "Where's any temptation at all?" Part of the qualm is that, where Matthew and Luke have extensive temptation accounts, each with three specific tests named and played out - not just the temptations themselves (yes, including the temptation to turn stones to bread), but Jesus's answers to them - "man does not live by bread alone..." for example. While Matthew's account expands through eleven verses and Luke's covers thirteen, Mark's temptation account only takes two.

In fact, today's reading is somewhat padded by material that's already been covered in the lectionary. Verses 9-11 came up on the Sunday on which we marked the Baptism of the Lord, and verses 14-15 appeared on the Third Sunday after Epiphany. Those two meager verses about the temptation are indeed our only "new" material for this first Sunday of Lent.

However, one can also point out that this combination of verses is new, and it may have something to teach us. These verses also clue us in on how Mark is presenting this Jesus character in ways that resonate deeply with the religious tradition they know. 

First we return to the Jordan River, where John, who typically baptized for the repentance of sin, baptized Jesus, who (as our faith reminds us) didn't sin. In another gospel this becomes a point of contention, as John protests the roles should be the other way 'round, but Jesus convinces him to do it anyway, and the baptism happens. Mark's account skips all that but adds some drama to what Jesus sees as he comes up from the water - memorably describing the heavens as "torn apart" before the dove-like Spirit descends on Jesus. 

Waters have a pretty interesting track record in Hebrew scripture, beginning somewhat mysteriously at the very beginning of Genesis. As early as the second verse darkness covers "the deep" and a wind from God blows over those waters, which are still later separated and eventually the oceans are formed. Early in Exodus we see a mother hiding her newborn son in a basket and setting it loose in the waters to keep a Pharaoh's soldiers from killing him; he is found and taken in by an Egyptian princess, but eventually Moses becomes the one who leads the Hebrew people out of Egypt. Those Hebrew people pass through both the Red Sea and the Jordan River en route to the promised land. Even the prophet Jonah spends a little time underwater, thanks to the efforts of a great fish, before being deposited at Nineveh to do the work God had called him to do.

Those are just a few examples. It's not a surprise that water, and immersion in it, becomes a part of an important religious practice, but the act of being immersed and then raised up works out pretty well as foretelling the ultimate earthly fate of this fellow that John was called upon to baptize. 

Before Jesus has even had a chance to dry off after the baptism, he is "compelled" into the wilderness. Matthew and Luke (and this verse in the NIV) offer words like "led," but nothing so gentle here; the NRSV offers "the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness" (emphasis mine). And no, we don't get any kind of account on how Jesus is "tested," which itself is a different interpretation than "tempted"; it suggests that one's strength or skill or faithfulness is being specifically tried, instead of one being lured or enticed into some sort of sin. 

Testing in the wilderness is, again, not new. The Hebrew people faced plenty of it on their way to the promised land, and they didn't always pass those tests. The prophet Elijah faced his times of trial in the wilderness, and David had to go on the run from Saul before becoming King himself. Again, the wilderness, like the water, have a history in the history of the Hebrew people, but there are new things here too.

Take those angels, who were present to minister to Jesus. That's not something you find in those Old Testament stories. That again adds something new to this story even if it starts out looking or sounding familiar. 

And then there are those wild beasts.

Yes, I know, the NIV uses the technically correct translation "wild animals." But let's be honest: "wild beasts" as found in the NRSV and other translations, just sounds cooler. 

While it might seem an obvious thing to expect wild animals in the wilderness, it's not the kind of thing that typically comes up in those accounts in Hebrew scripture. Also, for all the attention-getting quality of the inclusion of the "wild beasts," there isn't any particular indication that these wild animals actually did anything; no suggestion that Jesus had to wrestle with them or any such thing. The verse simply says "he was with the wild animals."

This might be something to think about. It was noted above that wild animals weren't typical of those earlier stories, but they aren't totally absent. There is the story of Daniel, who ends up in that den of lions but comes out unharmed. On one of Elijah's times in the wild, ravens actually came to bring food to him. 

What if, instead of being a part of the threat and peril of the wilderness, the "wild beasts" were really there to, well, be with Jesus. What if what we're seeing here, instead of a threat to Jesus along with all of Satan's testing, is the "wild beasts" - indeed, creation itself - recognizing their Creator, the one who in the prologue of John's gospel was "in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being"? If we take this possibility, it really does set Mark's temptation story apart from those in Matthew and Luke. No less that creation itself was at Jesus's side in his time of testing. Later in this chapter we see that unclean spirits know exactly who Jesus is, with plenty of fear; maybe the creatures of the wilderness know who Jesus is as well.

And speaking of those unclean spirits or demons; while Mark doesn't specifically say anything about how this testing came out, the way those demons react to Jesus later in the chapter suggest Jesus passed those tests just fine.

So, we've had "three w's" - water, wilderness, wild beasts - in this account so far. Verses 14-15 give us one more "w": witness. When this testing is done Jesus is out proclaiming. He goes back to Galilee and begins to bear witness. It's really the theme of Mark's gospel, his "topic sentence," his "mission statement": 

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is near; repent, and believe in the good news.

 

There it is: Jesus's message in a nutshell, and not at all a bad theme to hold in mind throughout this season of Lent. We get the "repent" message plenty in this season, with all of the emphasis on penitence and reflection, but maybe we would be well served to hold on to that "believe" part of Jesus's proclamation as well; to know that the time is fulfilled, or at hand, and the kingdom of God has drawn near to us. In Jesus, repentance is never a hopeless act, not with the reign of God at hand. 

So make that part of your Lenten discipline; repent, with hope in God's sovereignty. Like those wild beasts, recognize the Creator with us. See the Spirit descending like a dove. Know that even - no, especially - in this season of Lent, God is with us. 

Believe in the good news.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise noted): #166, Lord, Who Throughout These Forty Days; #---, When Jesus came from Nazareth; #410, God is Calling through the Whisper

Sermon: With Glory

First Presbyterian Church

February 11, 2024, Transfiguration B

Mark 9:2-9

 

With Glory

 

It’s one of those days, liturgically speaking.

One of those days that isn’t quite a major event in the liturgical calendar.  It’s certainly not on the level of Christmas or Good Friday or Easter, not even quite on the level of, say, Pentecost or Epiphany. It’s there, and it must mean something, but explaining or understanding just what it means isn’t easy at all.  

The Transfiguration of the Lord – there’s an unwieldy name for you – marks in the liturgical calendar the final Sunday before Lent starts. Its subject is that peculiar incident we’ve heard from Mark’s Gospel, in which Jesus takes a few of his disciples up a mountain and something happens that is rather difficult to describe.  

“Transfiguration” itself is an unusual word at best. Dictionary.com defines being “transfigured” as “to change in outward form or appearance; transform,” with a secondary definition of “to change as to glorify or exalt,” a definition which is largely based on its usage to describe this event.  

In fact we really don’t use this word very often outside of this story. We’re more likely to use a word like “transformation,” “transmogrification,” or maybe “metamorphosis,” which is actually close to the word used in the Greek text. Of course, popular culture can affect how we understand any of these words. The toys and movies about those robots that change into other kinds of machines can easily pop into people's minds when they hear or see the word “transformer,” and the comic strip Calvin and Hobbes used the word “transmogrifier” for Calvin’s fanciful machine for changing himself into someone else (that word became so uniquely associated with that comic strip that to this day, readers still think “transmogrify” was a made-up word, though it is quite real).

All of these words carry some implication that a person or thing changes appearance, but not necessarily changing in substance or person. The Transformer robot can still be called Optimus Prime even when it looks like a truck. Calvin is still Calvin even if he’s “transmogrified” into a tiger or frog or whatever his imagination comes up with.

What happens in today’s gospel is not exactly like that.  

Mark’s early readers would have realized that something was up the moment that Mark mentioned that Jesus and the three disciples were going up a mountain. Anyone who know their Hebrew Scriptures would have remembered that interesting things happen on mountains.  

One of the first such examples would have been Moses and his trips up Mount Sinai to receive the law from the Lord.  In Exodus 34, when Moses came down from the mountain after receiving the re-dictated Ten Commandments, his face was glowing, after God his Moses in a cleft in the rock and allowed divine glory to pass by Moses.  

Another, similar mountain encounter with the glory of God is recorded in 2 Kings, when the fugitive prophet Elijah encounters the glory of God not in fire or earthquake or whirlwind, but in the “sheer silence” that followed. Mountains are often – not always, but often – places where holy and mysterious things happen, and not just in the Hebrew/Jewish tradition. Mark’s readers would have likely taken the hint, and expected something unusual to happen. And in Mark’s usual no-nonsense, no-frills, no-time-wasted fashion, that expectation is rewarded.

Our author quickly tells readers that Jesus began to … change. To be transfigured, as translators have usually chosen to translate μεταμορφὠθη (metamorphothe), the Greek word found here. As Mark then describes the event, Jesus changes, but the change that Mark describes seems to be mostly about light; “his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them” (v. 3). This would also remind Mark’s listeners about those previous mountaintop experiences, with Moses’s face ending up glowing and Elijah glimpsing the dazzling glory of God.

And then, as if any more clues were needed, we get those very figures themselves appearing in this scene. Elijah and Moses appeared next to Jesus, talking with him – now there’s a conversation you wish somebody had been able to record!  

By this time Mark’s readers must have felt as if they were being hit over the head with the obvious; this man Jesus is of God. Mark told us way back at the beginning of the gospel that this was the “son of God” (1:1), and the scene before the three disciples seems to us (who after all have the benefit of Mark’s narration and storytelling to clue us in) to be a magnificent and irrefutable demonstration of the glory of God manifested in Jesus. This would seem to be as much proof as anybody could need, right? This man is from God, right?  The son of God?

You know how there always seems to be one person, no matter the situation, who always seems to say the wrong thing at the wrong time? No matter how beautiful, how glorious, how transcendent the moment, they manage to chime in with something that’s just wrongheaded or ugly or maybe just … off? In the gospels, Peter is a good bet to be that guy. In all of the gospels he manages to be that rare combination of (1) always willing to speak, and (2) not necessarily the sharpest knife in the drawer. In this case, these two traits combined to cause Peter to blurt out a suggestion that, for all his good intentions, ruined the moment. It was as if a resplendently beautiful bride took a pratfall halfway down the aisle.

To be fair, Peter’s suggestion about building three “dwellings” (also translatable as “tents” or “booths”) wasn’t totally out-of-nowhere. One of the possible interpretations of Jewish tradition at that time was that the “Feast of Booths,” a regularly-observed event, would be the time when God would intervene in Israel’s fortunes and usher in a new age. Peter seems to have jumped to the conclusion that the appearance of Elijah and Moses with their teacher was just this sign that God’s new age was arriving. Peter, though, was forgetting about the very things this teacher Jesus had been telling them, unpleasant things about suffering and death. Perhaps he wanted to forget them, or hoped that this intervention would make them unnecessary. Whatever it was, Peter’s blurted-out suggestion, probably babbled in a moment of bafflement and uncertainty, was just … off. 

To make that clear, a cloud descended over the mountain, and when it lifted Elijah and Moses were gone and Jesus stood alone before the disciples, with a stern warning from above to “Listen to him!”

It was a moment of revelation, in a way. The Transformers and Transmogrifiers that came up earlier were about concealment. Even the very packaging on that Transformers toy described them as “Robots In Disguise.”  This, on the other hand, wasn’t a disguise. Just the opposite; for those few transcendent, dazzling moments, the disciples caught just a glimpse of Jesus as he really is, in all the divine glory that is his.  

It had to be hard for the disciples not to wonder as they headed down the mountain, particularly when Jesus started going on about their not telling anybody about what they saw, why they couldn’t see this all the time, or at least more often.

Why is it that we can’t see this glory always? Why do we have to live in the dark and grey of the world, down in the valley instead of living in that glory up on the mountain? To put it directly, too many people have not seen that light, or have cowered in fear from it, or run from it; and this is exactly why we are called out to bear witness to the light of God that we have seen, the revelation we have known in Jesus, the indwelling of God that we know through the Holy Spirit. If others do not see the light, it is our job to bear witness to it. This is why we don’t get to stay on the mountain. There are too many in the valley or on the plain, in the city or out in the countryside, from whom the light is veiled, and our calling is to bear witness, to let that light that is within us shine through us.  

It’s not our light, of course. It is the light of God’s glory, the light that illumined Jesus on the mountain, dazzling and intense and brilliant. It is that glory, that transcendence that points us towards hope, knowing that the Jesus transfigured on the mountain goes before us, intercedes for us, suffers and rejoices with us in our sufferings and rejoicings.  

For this we rejoice. The Transfiguration, strange as it may be, is a moment of hope, maybe one last reminder before the penitence and reflection of Lent that we are not abandoned, we are not forsaken, we are not alone. To borrow from John’s gospel, the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.

For light, for transfiguration, for glory revealed, Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal); #13, The Mighty God with Power Speaks; #11, Source and Sovereign, Rock and Cloud; #156, Sing of God Made Manifest

 

Sermon: With Healing

First Presbyterian Church

February 4, 2024, Epiphany 5B

Mark 1:29-39

 

With Healing

 

What does it take to draw a crowd these days? I mean a serious crowd, throngs of people.

We'll see one such answer a week from today, of course. Thousands of people crammed into a stadium, thousands more pouring into Las Vegas, and millions around this country and others watching via television, for a football game. The numbers are pretty impressive. Nothing like a World Cup Soccer final, mind you, but pretty impressive.  

Who remembers, though, that back in the 90s that game was the object of a particularly daring and successful stroke of counterprogramming designed to draw off at least some of those crowds for a special, live episode of the sketch comedy program In Living Color? Timed to begin at the end of the first half and end in time for viewers to get back to the game, the counterprogramming stunt was successful enough to draw about 22 million viewers away from the Super Bowl halftime show, which that year featured singer Gloria Estefan and figure skaters Dorothy Hamill and Brian Boitano. 

Well, the NFL was going to have none of that. For the next year’s halftime show the league booked no less than Michael Jackson, only the biggest performer on the planet at the time. The pre-emptive strike worked, and in the twenty intervening years the halftime show has become a spectacle that equals if not dwarfs the game itself. Between the halftime show and the increasingly expensive and popular commercials that air during the game, it can become easy to forget there’s actually a game going on.

What such a story reminds us is that crowds are fickle. You can attract crowds, to be sure, but once they are pulled in, how do you keep their attention? 

One gets the idea that Jesus knew this, when one sees how today’s gospel reading turns out. When last we left our story, Jesus had just amazed the synagogue crowds with his teaching, with an exorcism thrown in as well. This got tongues wagging, as we were left with the statement that “At once his fame began to spread throughout the surrounding region of Galilee” (v. 28).  

So for a follow-up to this smashing introduction to the people of Galilee, Jesus goes to … the house of Simon. Maybe everybody needed a rest. It still seems an odd way to follow up that experience in the synagogue.  

As well, this must have been an interesting return for Simon. We first met him back in verse sixteen, where he and brother Andrew “immediately” dropped their nets and walked right off the fishing boat in response to Jesus’s call. It seems like a rash decision. One can only wonder how Simon was contemplating explaining all this to his family, especially his mother-in-law, perhaps. “You mean to tell me that you just up and walked away from a perfectly good fishing business to follow this homeless preacher? Son, have you got any sense in you at all?” I have to wonder if Simon might have been wishing that Jesus would change his mind and go looking for more demons to cast out.

Instead the homecoming became an occasion for another act of healing from Jesus. It’s interesting that Mark describes the event rather un-dramatically, even anticlimactically. Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever; Jesus took her hand and raised her up, and she got up and started to serve. Simple. (Yeah, right. Simple.)

Again word starts to spread, and before the day is over the whole town is gathered outside the house, with all those with illnesses or unclean spirits crowding around Jesus to be healed. For the people of Capernaeum this must have been an occasion of great joy, with health being restored, wholeness being reclaimed, and burdens of suffering and despair being lifted.  

Yet I ask you to consider that this is only the first occasion for healing to be found in today’s scripture.  

I realize that the rest of today’s reading doesn’t use the word “healing.”  Verse 39 does allude to more casting out of demons, true. But specific mention of healing? No, not in the rest of this passage.

And yet, after a full Sabbath day, first in the synagogue with the man with the unclean spirit, then at Simon’s home raising up Simon’s mother-in-law, and then with a whole townful of people seeking healing, we need to pay attention to what Jesus does the next morning.

He goes to find a “deserted place,” or a "solitary place," depending on which translation you read. Away from the city, away from the synagogue, away from Simon’s home, away from the crowds which were, according to Simon and his companions, searching for Jesus.  

Jesus went away to that isolated place, and he prayed.

If Jesus, son of God, “eternally begotten of the Father” as the creed we'll say later puts it, needed to pull away from the crowds and find a deserted place to rest and heal and get back in touch with his Father in prayer, we certainly can’t expect to be able to press on relentlessly without pause or without recharging our spiritual selves. If Jesus needed to pray, we need to pray. If Jesus needed to retreat to a solitary place, we need to step away ourselves.

In those moments there is healing to be had. In prayer there is nothing less than re-energization, from the very source of our being. In the retreat to prayer God is present to restore our strained energies, our frayed nerves, our exhausted spirits and worn-down souls. We cannot possibly think that we are superhuman enough to press through the grief, the stress, the weariness when our very Lord and Savior made a point of seeking out solitude and prayer.  

This is hard to fathom in our world where we are taught never to press the pause button. If Jesus were being directed by some kind of modern corporation or publicity firm, can you imagine their reaction to his going off to a deserted place to pray? First of all, there’s no way he could have done what he did on that Sabbath day without being hustled out the next morning to be on all the Monday morning news shows. The pursuing crowds would no doubt be joined by jostling cameras tracking his every step. Had Jesus been so bold as to slip out and find that deserted place, the handlers and spin doctors would have no doubt gone ballistic. “You’ve got to capitalize on the moment,” they’d say. “If you want to take advantage of this momentum you’ve got to get out there RIGHT NOW and press your advantage. Rest is for the weak.”  

You get the idea; our culture does not reward or even comprehend what Jesus did that morning. At what would seem to be a high point, a moment of triumph, Jesus disappeared. Simon seems to have had to organize a search party to find him. And Jesus didn’t relent and return to the disciples; they had to go and find him. Jesus took this time of restoration and healing seriously. We can do no less, no matter how much the world we live in discourages such behavior. 

Of course what happens next is equally intriguing. Simon and his companions finally catch up with him and let him know in no uncertain terms that he had disappointed a whole lot of people that morning. And Jesus’s response was…to leave town.  

Not to plunge into the crowds and sign them up for long-term membership (or even to get them on an email list). Not to exploit the masses for fame and recognition. For Jesus, the next step was to get on with the work of proclaiming the good news.  

Notice where Jesus’s attention was focused; his job, “why I have come” as he puts it in verse 38, was to proclaim the gospel. Given his retreat and prayer time, Jesus came away focused on the core of his mission, taking us back once again to what we might in modern jargon think of as Jesus’s mission statement, back in verse fifteen; “The time has come, ... the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.” The temptation to continue to work the present crowd, to ride the wave of popularity, would be very hard for us to pass up. Yet for Jesus, his own retreat and healing and prayer brought him back to his basic animating purpose, and he walked away from the crowds to find the next synagogue in which to teach, and continued to proclaim the good news.

As you know, this church is at a transition point. I haven't been in this interim role quite for a year yet. The church is looking forward, trying to catch a vision of just what God is calling us out to do. We all come to this moment aware of the passage of time, and aware of the uncertainty before us. What is our next step? Where do we go from here? What are we to be as a church, both as a worshiping community and as a witness to this town and this world?

Let one thing be crystal clear: we will go nowhere without all of us, together as a church and individually in our own homes and isolated places, taking time on occasion, as needed, to step away from the immediate crush of worry and uncertainty, and restoring our connection to the One who calls us his children. We can exhaust ourselves doing many things, but without the time of prayer and discernment and searching and listening for the still small voice amidst the whirlwind and chaos, we will go nowhere fast.

This congregation has been through a lot. There have been some wounds, some disappointments, some weariness as this church has sought its way forward. The church cannot find that way forward if its members don't take some time for healing and recharging, time spent in prayer and searching and discernment, a work that is not done with my call here or even with a new installed pastor in place; it is a work that is beginning and a work that will be ongoing.  

For the message that healing that comes in many forms, Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal); #645, Sing Praise to God Who Reigns Above; #793, O Christ, the Healer; #30, O God, in a Mysterious Way

Sermon: With Authority

First Presbyterian Church

January 28, 2024, Epiphany 4B

Mark 1:21-28

 

With Authority

 

In academic circles there is a humor piece that makes the rounds on occasion, with a title like “Why God would never get tenure” or something similar.  What follows is a list of reasons that, while humorously slanted, could be seen through squinted eyes as more or less academically correct descriptions of events in the history of the church or the Bible.  For example, in publication-crazed academia, everyone would recognize the failure reflected in the first reason on the list: “He only had one publication.”  Even I had more than that.

Other reasons on the list include (in reference to that “one publication”) “it was in Hebrew,” “it wasn’t published in a refereed journal,” and “some even doubt he wrote it himself.”  Other more general jokes on the list include “the scientific community has had a hard time duplicating his results,” “some say he had his son teach the class,” and “although there were only 10 requirements, most students failed the tests.”  You get the idea.

One of those jokes, though, actually resonates with today’s gospel reading, just a little bit.  Of the “one publication” the critique observes that it “had no references,” or more clearly, “no footnotes.”  

If you remember your own degree-seeking days, or if you’ve lived the academic life to any degree, you understand about things like footnotes and a bibliography, or a “works cited” or “works consulted” list – a means by which someone writing an academic paper acknowledges the sources that fed his or her research, those scholars whose previous work made the current work possible.  That kind of acknowledgment isn’t completely different from the kind of teaching that was typical of rabbinical scholars or teachers in Jesus’s time.  The scholar, addressing a particular text, would carefully develop an argument from the studies done by scholars before him, carefully balancing the work of one scholar against the commentary of another, weighing distinct views against one another, and carefully acknowledging and crediting those scholars whose work he uses.  A modern scholar uses those footnotes and bibliographies to perform much the same function.

Keep this in mind when approaching the story in Mark’s gospel for today.  In this case Jesus has the opportunity to speak in the local synagogue in Capernaeum.  This was not unusual.  A teacher did not necessarily have to be a synagogue official to be invited to speak in the service.  What Jesus did with that opportunity, though, aroused plenty of attention.  

We are not privy to the specifics of what Jesus was teaching here.  Mark is not interested in our knowing this, for whatever reason.  What he wants us to know is that Jesus’s listeners were quick to know that his teaching was different, and dramatically, surprisingly so.  Jesus wasn’t using the verbal footnotes common to the scribal tradition; his teaching was, as the text puts it, “with authority!”

Somehow Jesus was teaching in a way that didn’t involve all those meticulous cross-references.  He taught “with authority.”  He taught as the One – the only One – who did not need to cite and cross-reference and footnote.  He taught not just as one “with authority,” but indeed as authority himself.  

What happens next in the story often steals the thunder here, distracting attention from what Mark presents first.  One thing to watch in this gospel is how often Mark uses the word “immediately," or some equivalent.  He's used it already several times in this chapter, and he uses it more than we see here.  In the NIV verse 23 is translated as beginning “just then,” but in the Greek it’s the same word – εὐθύς – that elsewhere is translated “immediately.”  “Immediately” there was in the synagogue a man with an unclean spirit, and he cried out… .  This isn’t a crazed uncontrollable person, as will show up in chapter five, wandering about the tombs and ranting and raving. This is a man sitting in the synagogue listening to Jesus teaching, with the “unclean spirit” within unable to bear the presence of Jesus.  The most striking thing about this scene is that while the many in the synagogue might have marveled at the authority of Jesus’s teaching, only this unclean spirit truly grasped just what that teaching, and that authority, meant.

It meant that “the usual” was no longer enough.  It meant that “the way things are” was no longer acceptable.  It meant that those things that destroy from within, those things that hold us prisoner or keep us in thrall to what corrodes and corrupts us, those things are no longer in charge.  

In fact, this miracle – the best thing to call it, even as uncomfortable as it makes us – actually takes us back a few verses, to the proclamation found in verse 15: 

The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.

 

This miracle – but more so, this authority, this teaching that is like no other teaching that anyone has heard – is indeed a sign of the kingdom of God come near.  That demons (or unclean spirits, or any of those things that would enslave and break human beings) cannot stand in the presence of Jesus, is indeed a sign of the kingdom of God come near.  

But notice something else about this scripture.  Aside from the man with the unclean spirit, how do the people in the synagogue react to what happens?  What is their reaction to Jesus’s teaching, or to the silencing and casting out of the unclean spirit?  Let’s go looking for adjectives and verbs here to see just what Mark is saying.

Well, the NRSV translation gives us “amazed” in verse 22 to describe the people’s reaction to Jesus’s teaching “with authority.”  By verse 27, they are all “amazed,” and chattering to one another.  Finally in verse 28 we find out that Jesus’s fame begins to spread all through Galilee, which at least suggests that those who heard and saw went out and told others what they heard and saw.

These are certainly evocative words that make it clear people are impressed in some way. But it seems there is something missing in them.  

Where is the rejoicing?  Where are the “hosanna”s or the “alleluia”s?  People are amazed and astounded, but are they glad?

This points to something we might want to take with us from this passage.  Again reaching back to verse 15, Jesus comes proclaiming that “the time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near.  Repent, and believe in the good news.”  We say that the church is commissioned to proclaim the “gospel,” the “good news.”  Taken by itself that sounds good, but let’s be honest; there aren’t many people who like the sound of repentance.  It makes a demand on us.  It says things aren’t just perfectly fine and hunky-dory the way we are.  It says things have to change – no, it says things are going to change.  And that’s a little scary, for a church in a transitional time, or maybe even more so for a nice stable thriving church. And if it scares us, why should we think that those outside the church are going to be particularly comforted by it? This whole coming near of the kingdom of God upsets the established order of things, and that’s not something that everyone welcomes.

The second point has to do with that “authority,” and it might be a particularly appropriate lesson for this day in which our church installs deacons and also elders to the session.  Some scholars have observed of this story that readers through the ages have made a mistake in interpreting the reference to Jesus’s authority as a slight or criticism against the teaching of the scribes of the temple.  No.  That can’t be the point we take away from this story.  How could the scribes do otherwise?  They are but human beings.  Jesus’s authority was bound to be different because of who he was. The very first verse of this gospel tells it straightaway: “the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  The scribes could not possibly teach or advise or govern with that kind of authority any more than a contemporary academic or student can get away without citing their sources in their next paper.

And neither can we.  This is a lesson to remember for me, in my own ordination and vocation, as well as for those who are installed as deacons or elders today, and for those who are already serving, and for those who may serve in the future.  The authority of the deacons or session – indeed the authority of the church itself - rests in Christ alone.  It doesn’t come in titles or rituals or majority votes.  To the degree we claim authority in anything outside the head of the church, which is Jesus Christ – certainly to the degree we claim authority to rest in our own position or title – we are not followers of Jesus Christ.

This is the kind of thing that ought to speak with particular force to this church in this time, seeking the path forward with new pastoral leadership. This is the kind of thing that hopefully prompts us to get involved in that process, remembering that we are not seeking a new "boss"; we seek someone who knows who the "boss" is and acts accordingly.

To the degree we immerse ourselves in seeking the guidance of the Holy Spirit, we involve ourselves in studying and meditating upon scripture, we open our eyes to see where Christ would lead us to minister and to reach out both within this church and outside these walls in the community and world around us, then the coming near of the kingdom of God is good news indeed.  When we are grounded in the authority of Jesus, the Son of God, we are ready to hear and to follow where Jesus leads, to live as Jesus has already shown us how to live.  And then we are ready to be witnesses to what really is good news indeed.

For authority that will never be ours, Thanks be to God.  Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal); #15, All Creatures of Our God and King; #755, Alleluia! Laud and Blessing; #12, Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise

 

Sermon: The Heavens Torn Apart

Grace Presbyterian Church

January 7, 2024, Baptism of the Lord B

Genesis 1:1-5; Mark 1:4-5, 9-11

 

The Heavens Torn Apart

 

 

Does anything about this story from Mark sound familiar?

In truth there are several passages that might evoke something familiar from the Old Testament, or scripture we just heard during the season of Advent in particular. John the Baptist gets his own Sunday in Advent, and his wilderness-chic wardrobe might have touched off sparks of recognition. Maybe the image of the dove descending brought back memories of, say, the story of Noah’s Ark, and the dove that finally returned, letting Noah know that dry land was on its way.

In this case, though, I have in mind a particular image, found in a particular scripture from Isaiah that actually got preached about a month ago. Maybe it sounds just a little bit familiar? From the very beginning of Isaiah 64… 

“Oh, that you would tear open the heavens and come down…”

And there in today’s reading, verse 10:

“And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him.”

Honestly, it’s hard to believe Mark didn’t do that deliberately.

Of course, Isaiah had a much bigger display in mind. You might remember that the prophet spoke of mountains shaking, fire causing water to boil, enemies trembling, that kind of stuff. And of course, in Isaiah’s prophetic wish, the heavens-being-torn-open act was meant for all to see. Everybody was meant to be impressed and “scared straight,” so to speak, turning away from sin and rebellion to obedience to God.

That’s not quite how Mark’s account goes. In this case it seems Jesus is the only one who sees the heavens torn apart. Other gospels record the scene differently, but here the vision was apparently meant for Jesus alone. And of course, the Spirit “descending like a dove” probably wasn’t the follow-up Isaiah had in mind. Screaming like a hawk, perhaps, but a dove? Too peaceful-sounding, although doves actually don't sound all that peaceful if you catch them right.

Nonetheless, even this scene should give us pause. This was not a “safe” act for Jesus. Directly after this baptism Jesus would be driven out into the wilderness, to face temptation at the hands of the tempter himself (although we won't get to that reading until Lent). The course of Jesus’s ministry on earth was never going to be smooth, and Mark manages to make that clear just from this one image. “The heavens torn apart…”

In fact, this kind of imagery isn’t something Mark overdoes. The Greek word used here only appears one other time in this gospel, at the other end of it. In Mark 15:38, as Jesus hangs on the cross and dies, at that moment (we are told) that the curtain of the Temple was “torn in two.” The disruptive image of being “torn apart” returns at the end of Jesus’s ministry as it had appeared at its beginning.

Let’s be honest, it’s hard for us to think of baptism in this way. Nowadays, particularly in church traditions like ours, baptism often gets made “cute.” We have this cute little bowl of water, a child is baptized wearing a specially made and very cute baptism garment in many cases, … it’s just not the kind of picture that lends itself to images of the heavens torn apart. 

And yet, if we’re doing it right, this baptism can lead us places we don’t expect to go. If you’re lucky, it leads you to something manageable, like being ordained and then installed as an elder on your church’s session. Maybe even on the church's transition team.  And sometimes even a form of service like that can feel a little bit as though the heavens are least being ripped a little bit.

You might find yourself being led into far riskier and more challenging forms of service, whether it be in a pulpit or a mission field. You might find yourself put in a position of having to speak unpleasant truths among people who don’t want to hear them. You might find yourself, in the words of the PC(USA)’s A Brief Statement of Faith, called to “unmask idols in church and culture,” which never seems to go well for the one doing the unmasking. You might find yourself challenged to walk away from the comfortable and profitable, towards the challenging and impoverished to whom Jesus ministered. There’s no telling where that baptism might lead you. 

But baptism does come with its promises as well. You won’t find yourself abandoned. As a popular saying went in my younger days, “If you think God’s far away, guess who moved?” You won’t be left defenseless in the stormy and difficult times. You won’t be given up for lost or forsaken – not because baptism is some kind of magic talisman, but because the Jesus who took on baptism himself is faithful and unwilling to give us up, the ones whom he gave so much to redeem.

Remembering our baptism is obviously not meant to be a literal remembering for most of us; if you were baptized as an infant you are not expected to "remember" what happened on that occasion.  "Remembering our baptism," if anything, is about our need to remember the vows that were made for us, perhaps, and reaffirmed in our confirmation, or that we made ourselves if we were baptized as youth or adults. These things did not happen in isolation, but in the body of Christ represented by the church where that baptism took place. Parents who brought you forward before the congregation, trusting the pastor not to drop you or get water in your little baby eyes, the elder who spoke the words of the rite on behalf of that congregation, the pastor who performed the act "in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit"; we can remember that the baptism we experienced was done with and in the body of Christ, and marked us as belonging to that body. 

In either case, be aware that even now, your baptism may lead you somewhere you never expected, even if the heavens aren’t torn apart.

For the unexpected path from the baptismal font, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal); #408, There's a Sweet, Sweet Spirit; #482, Baptized in Water; #480, Take Me to the Water

Sermon: All the World

First Presbyterian Church

January 6, 2024, Epiphany B

Matthew 2:1-12

 

All the World

 

 

I am working on a basic presumption this morning. I am assuming that no one in this congregation this morning has any ancestry that traces its roots back to first-century Judea. This is actually somewhat significant for a reason. While the Christmas story as is told in the gospel of Luke is the one that everybody knows, the one that is the basis for every Christmas pageant ever, and the one that Linus recites when Charlie Brown pleads for anyone to tell him what Christmas is all about, it is Matthew's account in the first two chapters of his gospel that takes the boundaries of this story beyond the boundaries of first-century Judea, a province of the Roman state called Palestine.

The world outside Judea enters into this story thanks to the Magi, represented by the three figures in this nativity who are adorned rather differently than the rest of this cast. Of course, we see from Matthew's account that these Magi did not, in fact, come to any stable; verse 11 makes clear that when they arrived, they entered a house, their own house as far as we know, with no mention of mangers or stables or any other such thing. Matthew's story needs to be understood on its own every now and then, not wedged into Luke's very different story.

These Magi, however many of them there were (again, there were three gifts but that doesn't necessarily mean there were three Magi bearing them), make a very long trip from somewhere in the east to get to Judea. Most scholarship reckons that they came either from Persia (modern-day Iran) or Babylon (modern-day Iraq), which gives you an idea of the length of this trip they made with nothing but their camels or their own feet. 

And about those gifts...

It has become something of a modern joke to mock the inappropriateness of these gifts for giving to a mother caring for a small child. Since we don't know how old Jesus was by the time the Magi got there, it would have been hard to know exactly what the child, maybe anywhere from infant to age two, would need. More to the point, though, is that these Magi first went to Jerusalem for a reason. 

Since they saw a sign in the stars that provoked them to go search for a child born "king of the Jews," but had nothing else to work with (remember, there weren't any angels giving them instructions), the only obvious place for them to seek s newborn king would have been a royal court. However weird gifts of frankincense and myrrh might sound to us non-royals (I don't think anybody would refuse a gift of gold), they would be regarded as perfectly appropriate gifts to a royal court, which is where these Magi would have expected to bestow such gifts in a mannered and well-scripted ceremony of exchange across national borders. 

The unexpected chaos at Herod's court sent these Magi off on a different path, with the star they had followed now behaving in very un-star-like fashion and "leading" them to Bethlehem and the house where Mary and Joseph and the child were. Probably they knew darn well, once they arrived, how odd their gifts were going to seem; but perhaps we should allow that those gifts might be overshadowed by what they did when they saw the child; they "bowed down and worshiped him," as Matthew describes in verse 11. These Magi from somewhere back east, not at all subject by human reckoning to a "king of the Jews" present or future, understood enough out of all the confusion they had caused and experienced to know that the only appropriate thing to do before this child was to bow down and worship. We could only hope and pray that we would have been so wise. 

For their reward, the Magi finally got their own angelic dream, warning them to avoid Herod on the way home - an instruction they were probably only too glad to accept. On the other hand, if they had harbored any desire to stay and worship this child further, this angelic instruction made that impossible; they had to get out of the way and not risk bringing any harm to this child. 

For all of this, the challenge for us to remember is that, for all practical purposes, these Magi are us, or at least as close to 'us' as there is in this story. All of those participating in Luke's accout are Judeans, practitioners of Judaism as much as the Holy Family was. 

These Magi come from, and one might argue on behalf of, the world outside Judea and the religion of Judea. They are, in many ways, the first signal that we get in any nativity narrative that the "Gentiles," the term we will commonly see throughout the New Testament for the non-Jewish world, are welcomed to come and worship this newborn king. This young "king of the Jews" turns out to be one who welcomes and calls in all peoples from all places to come and to follow. 

For the Magi and their journey for all the world, Thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Hymns (from Glory to God: The Presbyterian Hymnal unless otherwise indicated): #152, What Star Is This, with Beams So Bright; #147, The First Nowell, v. 3-6 only; #146, Gentle Mary Laid Her Child; #151, We Three Kings of Orient Are; #---, Open our eyes (insert); #150, As With Gladness Men of Old